Fire in wine country
Is there anything B.C. can learn from the Northern California wildfires? By Tammy Schuster
Fundraising under way in the Napa-Sonoma Counties. The Grateful Table, an event attended by over 500 people in late November, raised close to $250,000 U.S. for wildfire relief.
Flinty, smoky, and heavy. All
counties — it is reported that only 11
“Without downplaying the individual
adjectives a wine connoisseur might
were destroyed or heavily damaged.
losses suffered, most of the damage
use to describe the vintage he or she
A number of other wineries sustained
was done to residential housing,” says
is sniffing, swirling, and guzzling
damage to property and buildings,
Gladys Horiuchi, director of media
from a wine glass. They’re also
but most are — and have been for a
relations at the Wine Institute. “The
adjectives used to describe Northern
while — ready to accept visitors, host
biggest impact wasn’t to wineries and
California’s air quality in the late
tastings, and produce wine.
vineyards, but to the displacement of
fall when wildfires burned its wine region.
20
According to the Wine Institute,
people.”
California accounts for 85 per
With record-breaking temperatures
While images of the massive fires
cent of U.S. wine production, and
in B.C. this summer, the province
seen in the media may have caused
Mendocino, Napa, and Sonoma
had their own fires, evacuations,
many to believe that wine country is
counties represent only about 12
and losses to contend with, but the
gone, the Wine Institute in California
per cent of overall California wine
dangers are the same for both regions.
says the state’s wine region is okay.
grape production combined. By the
Bob Gray, a B.C. fire ecologist from
Of the more than 1,200 wineries
time the wildfires started, 90 per
R.W. Gray Consulting Ltd., says those
located in the affected areas —
cent of the grapes had already been
dangers rely on three main factors:
Mendocino, Napa, and Sonoma
harvested.
weather, landscape, and fuel — the
